Using the advice given in this well-researched and tested article [opens a PDF], I bought a bunch of Nano-Liner pens from Royal & Langnickel.  Then I made a whole bunch of blocks with blank white strips in the middle.  I copied a 1930's quilt I saw online, drafting my own measurements and working with scraps.  Knowing that non-quilters might want to write all the way to the edge of fabric, I made sure to surround the white pieces with dark fabric so no-one would write past the white and no words would get lost in seam allowances.  

The hardest part was collecting all the signatures: two people from the class of 2024 took charge of getting their classmates' signatures for me; I got my class' signatures piecemeal; and I got the students from 2026 all at once at their orientation.  After that, assembly was easy, and I sent it to a long-armer for quilting.  The photo above is me squaring off the edges before binding, and the picture below is the label.  

Further research (well, further noodling around on the internet and stumbling on things) revealed the more common name of the block is Goose in the Pond, because the corners resemble flying geese blocks, and they seem to be coming toward the center "pond".  It is less frequently called Young Man's Fancy.  It looks like an elaborate version of churn dash, as if some show-off took the shape of a churn dash and gleefully subdivided it... doubtless while crowing "what if I take the half-square triangles on the corners and make them smaller ones, and change one of them into a 9-patch?!  And then instead of a bar connecting them, I'll use rail fence units!"

Goose in the Pond has five elements:

• "geese" made of half-square triangles (HSTs) in the corners, pointing inward
• 9-patches nestled inside the geese
• bars (rail fence units) connecting the 9-patches to each other
• the background (outsides)
• the "pond" in the center

Color-wise, the darker or focus fabric is used for the geese, the outer rails, and the O of the 9-patches.  Lighter or non-focus fabric is used for the background, inner rail, pond, and the X of the 9-patches.  Under the name Goose in the Pond, I found many more examples and variations.  

​There's a lot of overlap in quilt block nomenclature, with the same basic blocks sometimes given different names when the colors are changed.  Close relatives of Goose in the Pond vary in the configuration of the rails/9-patches, or arrangement of the HSTs in the corners.  Relatives include:

• Bachelor's Puzzle -- rail fences are light-dark-light; HSTs are same as Goose in the Pond
• Missouri Puzzle -- rail fences are light-dark-light, and there's a different arrangement to HSTs in the corners, creating secondary patterns when tiled
• New Mexico -- rail fences are dark-light-dark, same as Goose in the Pond; HSTs are same as Missouri Puzzle
• The block used in the Geometric Garden quilt, which started this whole info-quest, is analyzed in greater depth, below.  

Time of Popularity: Most of examples cataloged in the Quilt Index are from the late 1800's-1940's, with the bulk being in the middle of that time span.  This makes me wonder if it became popular after being published (perhaps Nancy Cabot's 1933 column?), rather than being a folk-pattern that developed regionally over time.  It's not a super popular block at the moment, but not unheard of, either.  
​
Dimensions: blocks are nearly always 5x5 grids, meaning the "bars" are the same length as the HSTs.  Vintage blocks occasionally have the "bars" be longer than the HSTs, changing the size of the center block and the proportions of the whole.  Notably, when the bars are longer, the quilt is often labeled Young Man's Fancy.  On Point Quilter, in copying the vintage Geometric Garden block, rendered it a 6x6 grid, with the bars taking up two spaces.  

Elements: it is standard to use a rail-fence style for the bars (three stripes); however, the Geometric Garden quilt (1900-ish) uses two stripes for the bars, and those stripes don't merge neatly into the 9-patch.  One vintage quilt (circa 1900) haphazardly swaps rail fences and 9-patches!  This modern quilt, (also on Instagram) by Tammy Morris (2024) is based on a 1912 variation of the Goose in the Pond, and shows considerable elaboration of the units!  Ruth B. McDowell​ (1945-2024) did an inventive art quilt where the Goose in the Pond blocks are in the background, merging into appliqued geese in the foreground.  

Assembly: I think vintage quilters may have assembled their blocks one at a time, judging by the occasionally wonky lines and mismatched corners, or the choices of fabrics in the scrappy quilts (each rail being a different color).  Modern quilters more often use assembly-line methods, such as first sewing long strips together and then sub-cutting to make rail fences and 9-patches.  It's also common for modern quilters to square up after each step, using clear acrylic rulers and rotary cutters; this produces more uniform results.  Blocks can be set straight or on point, but are rarely tiled.  Instead, if they are set straight, they might have sashing, or alternate with blank blocks to ease the eye with negative space.  

Color: Everything from high-contrast, two-tone quilts to scrappy morasses of plaid and prints can be found.  This variation seems to come down to the maker, not the time period.  

As usual for me, since I tend to quilt from scraps that I have rather than buying yardage that I need, all I need for a pattern is to draw the finished shape, and write a few measurements on there.  The drawing represents the finished dimensions, and my notes add the seam allowances or note what size I need to cut for 8-at-a-time HSTs.  Each square is its own mini-project, and when I put it with the others, great is my delight!  

I will make a bunch of these blocks, about half with darker geese and half with lighter geese, and when I have enough, I'll come up with a layout!  

Now that it's done, do I like it?  Yes, but not the same way I did back then.  The color combinations were more "me" then; like the Birds & Blossoms quilt.  At that time in my life I was drawn to softness, while now I enjoy surprise.  Plus, the background green is dull; I used it because I had a lot of it, not because it was the right color.  In the photo below, the wall it's hanging on is painted pale sea-foam, which is not an ideal backdrop.  I bet I'd like it a lot more on a different wall, if I had one!  

But I still love the design; I've never seen octagons nested together like this with setting triangles.  One of the yellow flowers looks just like the petals of a morning glory, so I may put that in my back pocket for a future project.  Finally, in contrast to how tedious the quilting was to do, the final result has a light, free feeling.  The eye sort of unfocuses, in a similar way to looking at a meadow.  

​I also think it's a nice piece of fan-art for Youngcheol Lee (@namoosai on Instagram), whose work was my inspiration; it's not a copy, but it does seem to fit into the floral world he paints, while still being my own.  

​This year (2025), I will exhibit the Meadow Quilt in Rusty Barn's Quilt, Craft & Sewing Festival, April 10-12th, as well as the Northwest Quilters Guild Festival of Quilts in September.  

In Lori's pattern, the hats all have their bows on the same side, but I opt for alternate sides, because the blue is so distinct from the other colors, that I want to make sure its weight is balanced around the quilt.  Here's my finished top, ready for quilting.  (This is the one I mentioned at the end of my last post, for which I am considering using the off-white fleece blanket as a batting.  The gray fleece is too dark, and kind of dulls the quilt by showing through the yellow.)  

I find pleasure in looking at the end result, and knowing I made beauty from what I considered unpromising materials.  Nevertheless, it sits in a bag, unfinished.  

As a kid, my material culture was all hand-me-downs and make-it-works and it's-still-goods.  We shopped as needed, not for fun.  We saved things that might be useful.  We re-used packaging.  We got our clothes at the thrift store.  (Real thrift stores, not the overpriced "vintage" markets of my current city!)  There were several reasons for this lifestyle: being poor was one of them... my dad was starting a business and supporting a family of five on what he could make as one man, so my mom did her part to stretch every cent!  Being frugal was another: both my parents were makers of some stripe, and they hated waste.  They had been trained by their parents and grandparents, people who remembered World War II and the Depression, who saved their tin-foil for re-use, and ate every bite on their plates.  

For me, this mentality was part of our family identity... we weren't "brand new" people.  We didn't pay full price.  What kind of crazy person would buy jeans at the mall for $29.99 when you could get "the same thing" at the thrift store for $5?  Of course, it's rarely the "same thing", because it's used, but in a culture of fast fashion and fast closet turnover, sometimes it is the same thing!  And it sure is fun to get what feels like a deal.  

On the other hand, every mentality has its downside, and the downside of frugality and thriftiness is hoarding and the anxiety which hoarding causes.  As an adult, I have always lived in small spaces on limited means, and my thriftiness serves and hinders in equal measure.  It serves me to be able to re-purpose cheap things to meet my needs, but I have had to combat my tendency to save every box because "it's sturdy" or "it might make a good organizer".  I have to stop myself from buying something because it's a "good deal" and I "might use that someday"!  Truthfully, if I'm not actually using it, I'm just storing it.  Do I value the item or the space more?  Moreover, I have been burned a few times when I had to move, and while downsizing and packing realized I was getting rid of a bunch of stuff I'd never used.  It's not a "deal" if you never use it.  Finally, as an act of faith, letting go of what I don't need today says that I trust God to provide what I need tomorrow.  He always has!  So I swing between hoarding and sufficiency, but always with a frugal bent.  

This quilt is a picture of hoarded items reclaimed.  I don't know where I got the ugly muddy fabric from; it was likely given to me, or I bought it in a bag of other fabric.  But I kept it even though I disliked it, because it was "perfectly good" and "could be used" and "I might need it"!  And I didn't need it.  I carried it from house to house and stored it in a drawer until, in this project, I made a point of using it.  Even then, while cutting it, I was arguing with it.  

Did sewing this quilt redeem that wasted time and space by making a larger, useful whole out of a small pile of scraps?  Or could I have let the pile of ugly scraps go years ago, and made things I loved more?  It's true, this quilt top gave me a few evenings of pleasure, and cleared my stash of fabric I disliked.  But why did that stash need clearing?  Because I was hoarding things I disliked!  That's almost as crazy as paying full price for jeans! 

Now I ask myself... why am I storing this quilt top?  So I can quilt it someday.  Do I like it enough to do so?  Will I enjoy the act of quilting it?  Or, could I let the whole project go into the world, to be finished by someone else who might actually love it?  

I think I've talked myself out of finishing this project!  The lesson of this quilt is that you can save every scrap and make something beautiful, but you don't have to.  Time and space have value, too, and both are limited.  Frugality is a virtue, but wisdom and discernment more so!  

​So I donate the top to the Northwest Quilters guild to be finished for charity.  Maybe it’ll make a nice lap quilt for an older woman with a taste for elegant florals.  But not a baby!  ​

Then, on November 2nd, at Quiltopia in Salem OR, I buy some lilac fabrics on purpose, just for this project.  I use the lilacs to frame to roses.  Nothing fancy, except that I cut one set of sashing on grain and the other on crossgrain, because the print has a nap and I want all the flowers to be “growing” the same direction!  It takes a little thought, but I think the end result is more harmonious than if I’d just cut rectangles without paying attention to the direction of the print.  Soon, I have quite a pretty top put together.  

For batting, I have to cheap out a bit.  Being short on funds at the moment, I use an Ikea fleece blanket (Vitmossa throw, $1.99).  I know it won’t shrink and crinkle the way a cotton batt does, but it'll have to do.  I make an envelope-style sandwich, turn, and quilt it after the edges are enclosed.  Actually, the fleece blanket is a dream to quilt with!  It’s made of a fuzzy knit, not a felted woven, and the knit allows the needle to glide through its innumerable holes with ease.  I use chalk lines to plan diagonal quilting over the corners, converging on the center, then sew over the chalk lines with wavy lines.  I don't fret about minimal quilting distance, because the knitted batt didn’t require quilting to hold it together.  To my delight, when I wash and dry it, the cotton still shrinks and crinkles a little, giving the quilt a crinkly charm, and the polyester batt is lightweight enough that the blanket dries super fast.  It’s so satisfactory that I’m tempted to buy their off-white throw (Thorgun throw, $3.99) as a batt for a lighter-colored top I want to finish.  

First thing, I stabilize the nine-patches, so their scanty seam allowances will have a better chance of holding up in the wash.  To do this, I press them how I want them, then lay them atop the gluey side of some iron-on interfacing, and press again.  The interfacing adheres to the back of the nine-patch, holding its seam allowances down and making the whole unit act like one piece of fabric instead of a series of joints and intersections.  

Because it's small, like a crib quilt or changing pad, I don't need much batting: I cobble together some scraps of batting and whip-stitch them together.  I back the quilt with more of the ladies' heads and scraps of plaid.  Then I sandwich it envelope-style (no need to bind).  

The browns in this quilt remind me of the "country primitive" aesthetic that was popular in quilting in the 1990's: traditional patchwork and simple appliqué, rendered in chocolate browns, mustard yellows, and turkey reds, on a background of beige.  Slubby faux-homespun and fuzzy flannels were common.  This aesthetic is part imagination (actual pioneer women proudly appliquéd elegant and complex designs, not five-pointed stars with two long legs or disjointed snowmen with big-stitch arms), and part a genuine attempt to imitate history (look at the Quilt Index's records by time period).  The 1800's do look very brown... but were they?  Prior to the invention of synthetic and colorfast dyes in 1856, many things initially dyed bright colors with organic dyes would fade into other colors ("fugitive green"), or darken to brown.  So maybe the antique quilts were bright initially, and only look brown due to age.  People get inspiration from the past, but what they make is still 100% of their own time.  

My aunt, my dad's sister, has made and given my family several quilt or quilted pillows in the country primitive style.  One, a log-cabin quilt that she made for my parents, was suffused with love: every time she started a block (with the center "hearth" piece), she prayed for our family, and with each log she prayed for my parents marriage, or us kids.  My dad used that quilt in his recliner for years, until it absolutely fell to shreds, whereupon she made him a lap quilt (which he didn't get much use of before he passed).  So I have a warm feeling when I see brown quilts. ​

In March 2024, I exhibited Alcott's 9-patch at the Northwest Quilters' Festival of Quilts, in Hillsboro, Oregon.  I submitted it into the "small pieced" category, but the organizers decided it qualified as a miniature instead.  In the miniature category, it took third place!  So that is very cool!  

I started this quilt around 2003 (my last year of high school), thinking it was a good way to use worn old jeans.  After all, jeans wear out at cuffs and pockets, knees and sometime inner thighs, but not the lower leg area.  Why not save some fabric from the landfill?  So I salvaged squares from my old jeans, and stuff from the thrift store (XXL yielded plenty of fabric).  My mom told another homeschooling mom about my project, and she gave me a pile of jeans that her son "never wore".  (Come to find out he'd paid a lot of money for designer jeans, and was super peeved to find out his mom gave them away and I cut them up.  Oh, moms!)  I removed pockets and deliberately cut the squares to showcase the difference between faded and non-faded areas.  

I designed the quilt to fit my parents' queen-size bed.  Several black pieces were set aside to mark the corners, and three layers beyond the corners for drape.  I arranged the pieces to distribute the lights and darks evenly, piled them in neat stacks with labels and a plan, then put the whole pile away and forgot it!

In 2009, when I was living elsewhere and wanted to sew something, I pulled the denim quilt pieces out.  As I sewed each seam, I finger-pressed it open, then used a 3-step zig-zag to hold each seam allowance down.  This was time-consuming and annoying, but looked cool.  My sewing machine didn't much appreciate the hard work, and the quilt got heavier and heavier.  The project went from fun to onerous pretty fast, but I stubborned my way through finishing the top.  Then I put it away again.  

I moved out of state and forgot the quilt existed, but I guess one day my mom found it.  Nothing irks her like an unfinished object!  She took it to a shop with a long-arm, and told them she had no clue and could they help her.  They sandwiched it with a king-size batt and a cotton backing she provided, and showed her how to use the long-arm.  

So that was my first quilt: a simple, HEAVY denim one-patch.  A decade-year project finished by my mom.  

UPDATE - March 30, 2024 
On March 8th and 9th this year, I exhibited my Micro-Mini Quilt in the Northwest Quilters' 47th Festival of Quilts show.  It won first place in the Miniature category!  

Ultimately, this will be a small wall hanging, but it's not ready yet.  I feel like it needs either a frame, or some third dimensional element.  I will let it sit for a while, and see what it wants to be.